> The use of antibiotics seems to me to be the greatest difference between Europe and America.

If you mean, the regulations regarding antibiotics, yes. However, many US beekeepers never use antibiotics, and many Europeans do.

> there is no doubt, that a substantial part of the presently marketed honey contains residues of antibiotics. Indeed, different reports on antibiotic residues in honey were made at the recent Apimondia symposiums in Celle in 2003 and 2004. Twenty to 50% of the honey, imported in France (Morlot and Beaune, 2003), Belgium (Reybroeck, 2003) and Switzerland (Bogdanov and Fluri, 2000) contained antibiotics, mostly streptomycin and sulfonamides, but also tetracylines and chloramphenicol. On the other hand, honey produced in Switzerland (Bogdanov and Fluri, 2000), Belgium (Reybroeck, 2003) and Germany (Wallner, 2003) had a lower residue level, varying from 1 to 7%. 

> For Italian honey contradictory results have been reported. In one publications about 5% of the samples were reported to contain tetracycline (Sabatini et al., 2003), while according to another 50% of the Italian samples contained the same antibiotic (Tantillo et al., 2000). A recent publication reported that 2 to 7% of the Italian honey samples tested contained sulfonamides, tetracycline or tylosin (Baggio et al., 2004). During the 2004 Celle conference no substantial change was reported. Results from different laboratories showed that a great part of Chinese honey, but also of honey from various countries, contains chloramphenicol

Contaminants of bee products Stefan BOGDANOV Apidologie 37 (2006) 1–18

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